The Importance Of Being Slow

Only 12 days to go until my next race, a small, local 6-miler! I’m getting a little bit nervous, especially because I feel slightly undertrained. I really should have done a few more long runs, but I’ve been struggling with my motivation lately. Obviously, my lazy self won too often. Sigh! But I won’t give up yet! I still have a few days of training left.

So today I set out to conquer another long-ish run.

The Stats:

Distance: 5.4 miles (8,7 km)

Time: 1:02:00 minutes

Average pace: 11:28 min/mile

Feeling: Tired

That’s a new distance record! Ok, only by a few hundred meters, but anyway, it was my first ever run over an hour!

I seem to have some kind of mental problem with running for 60+ minutes. I really need to get over that, if I want to do more races in the future.

Finally I’ve learned to accept, that I need to slow down on my longer runs. After about 20 minutes I settled into a comfortable pace, that I knew I could maintain for quite a while. That pace is slower than my usual one, but I’m positive that I can cover 6 miles if I stick to it, and that’s what I’m going to do during my next race.

I try to squeeze in another long-ish run, preferably 6 miles, to be 100% percent certain that I can finish that distance. Let’s hope the weather will be on my side, just for once.